The Affordable Care Act has passed constitutional muster with the recent Supreme Court decision, and that's a good thing.

While so-called Obamacare does have its faults, it has provided health care coverage for millions of Americans who had previously gone without, and it's stopped insurance companies from cherry-picking the healthy and leaving the sick and suffering behind. Plus, it has provided incentives for hospitals, doctors and insurance companies to work together to bring down costs.

Nevertheless, it needs to be changed — but not in the way that knee-jerk Republican naysayers and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, in particular, want to change it. They'd like to repeal the law — even if they have to wait until 2017 and the inauguration of a new president. Gov. Scott Walker has vowed that, if elected president, repeal of the ACA would be a priority in his first 100 days. They'd all like to go back to a system that for decades left up to 50 million Americans without health coverage and padded the bottom lines of health care conglomerates.

No, what needs to be done in the years going forward is to make improvements in the ACA and eventually turn it into a universal single-payer health care system, which this country has needed for nearly a century.